Bengali instruction

[Anshuman Pandey]

On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, JM wrote:

> Any advice for English-speaking students wanting to learn Bengali?
>
> Recommended texts?
> Summer courses or periodic intensive courses anywhere?
> recommended full courses of study at universities, institutes on the Indian
> subcontinent, etc.?

A Bengali primer by William Radice in the "Teach Yourself" is a good text,
however the difficulty of the exercises increases dramatically at the
onset. The Radice text has examples in Bengali script (and in
transliteration as well at the beginning of the text.)

A widely-used primer by Edward Dimock is also useful, but all of the
Bengali text appears in transcription.

I believe the only full length elementary course in Bengali is taught at
the University of Washington, Seattle, during the Summer Quarter, which
runs from mid-June to the end of August. From experience,  I can say that
the instructor, Dr. Carol Salomon, is wonderful and has an excellent
command of the language.

For more information please refer to the home of the Department of Asian
Languages and Literature at:

        http://weber.u.washington.edu/~asianll/

My Bengali for TeX package might also be of use to those wishes to produce
high-quality Bengali documents. More details at:

        ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/language/bengali/pandey/

Regards,
Anshuman Pandey